


Mazarbul

by CrayonHyacinth



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: (kinda), M/M, Night At the Museum AU, No Smut, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 12:00:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21118436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrayonHyacinth/pseuds/CrayonHyacinth
Summary: Bilbo Baggins needs a job, so when the Museum of Natural History in Dale offers him a position as a night guard he accepts it, even though he is unqualified. He had been told to expect long, quiet nights, but no matter what he was told he would not have expected what happens in the museum after dark. How do you prepare yourself for exhibits coming to life?Iron dwarves, stealing wax figure creatures and miniature diorama orcs were enough, but soon Bilbo finds himself wrapped up in the mystery of the museum, especially in the exhibits reaction to him. It is a mystery he is determined to solve if only the wax figure of Gandalf the Grey and the very alive seeming yet long-dead Thorin II Oakenshield didn't keep getting in his way. And why was he not allowed to go up to the top floor?





	Mazarbul

The museum director had recognized him- he was sure of it. The second his hooded blue eyes had landed on Bilbo they had widened and stared at him for one astonished moment before returning to normal. After that he’d treated Bilbo as he might treat any other applicant, giving him a kind but indifferent smile as he shook his hand and staring down his long nose thoughtfully as he perused the resume he had been presented with. Yet Bilbo couldn't help but notice the tiny upwards turn of his mouth when he told him his name was Baggins, nor could he gloss over the contented sigh that had escaped his lips when Bilbo told him he was a writer. Not to mention the fact that he’d given him the job straight away even though he was wholly unqualified. 

There was just something about him that was unnerving. It wasn't just that he seemed perfectly suited to being a museum director. No, it was more the way he appeared to exude the past. Standing under the bright electric lights in his office, drawn up to his magisterial height, he didn't seem like he belonged there at all. To be perfectly honest, had he been wearing a long robe rather than a starched white suit, Bilbo would likely have mistaken him for one of the exhibits. Still, the mystery of Gandalf the White (yes, he had a title instead of a surname) was one that could be sorted out another day. The point was he’d gotten the job. God knew he desperately needed it, and best of all- he started tonight.

He pulled on his uniform, feeling only mildly embarrassed that the only one that fitted him had been made as a present for the child of one of the previous night guards. The little badge over his heart glinted gold in the light, words reading ‘Dale Museum of Natural History - Night Guard’. He chuckled quietly to himself. What was a city of men and dwarves doing hiring a hobbit as a night guard? Clearly it wasn’t a job fraught with danger. After a moment’s consideration, he slid a book and a blank notebook off the table beside him into his bag. He would need something to pass the long, sure to be slow hours 

Closing the bedroom door behind him, Bilbo spotted his nephew Frodo’s dark curls peeking up over the top of the couch, a mop of gold next to him that of Samwise Gamgee. Sam’s father was the owner of a local plant nursery Bilbo visited often, and Sam and Frodo had been thick as thieves for as far back as their lives stretched. Bilbo had spoken to the Gaffer and he’d allowed Sam to stay over, at least on the nights Bilbo was working. As he drew near Bilbo saw that they were bent over a battered compendium of Elvish Lore that sam had taken to carrying with him wherever he went, despite the fact that it was very nearly bigger than he was. Bilbo tapped them on the shoulders and they spun around, staring wide-eyed up at him. 

“How do I look?” he asked, doing a dramatic spin that made both boys giggle.  
“Very dapper Mister Bilbo,” Sam answered. ‘Dapper’ was a word he’d learnt recently and become quite attached to, though he didn’t always use it correctly.  
“What have I told you?” Bilbo sighed in an amused manner. “I’ve known you your whole life Sam, there’s no need to call me ‘Mister’. It’s like if I called you Samwise whenever I talked to you.”  
“Right on Mister Bilbo, sir.”  
Frodo giggled again.   
“Uncle, if you work at the museum now does that mean we can get in for free?”  
Bilbo gave his nephew a puzzled look.  
“You can always get in for free. It’s a public space.”  
“There’s a ‘suggested donation’ but they're mean to you if you don’t pay it.”  
He smiled. Of course, Frodo knew that.  
“Well, I’m sure I can get you in without paying the donation. Who knows, maybe one night you could come to work with me.”  
Frodo cheered.  
“Can I come too, Mister Bilbo?” Sam piped up excitedly.   
“Only if you stop calling me Mister.”  
“Oh, bother,” Sam said in such a genuinely dejected way hat Frodo cracked up. He was still laughing (though his laughter was less guffawing by this point and more a good-natured wheeze) when Bilbo shut the apartment door behind him.  
***  
The sun had not yet sunk below the horizon when Bilbo stepped through the glass doors into Dale Museum’s high ceilinged foyer, and the remaining daylight danced across the walls. The air smelt slightly musty as if not only the exhibits but the entire place was ancient. Dust motes swirled lazily through the air, and Bilbo closed his eyes, taking a deep breath to calm the anxiety jumping in the pit of his stomach. When he opened them he leapt back dramatically, tripping and dropping his bag to the floor in fright. 

A deep laugh boomed throughout the foyer.  
“Not every day you come face to face with a warg skeleton, huh?” 

Bilbo scanned the room for the owner of the voice and his eyes landed on a giant pale figure on the opposite side of the room. An orc stood there, a prosthetic attached where his right arm should be and scars running down his smiling face. Something flickered in Bilbo’s subconscious, a spark on a bed of pine needles starting to smoke. Bilbo had no problem with orcs- he knew their history but nowadays they all just went about their business just as anyone else did. There was just something about this one in particular that made goosebumps spring up on his skin. Something in the croaky timbre of his voice that was drawing Bilbo back to-

But then it was gone, and the pale orc was crossing the room and extending his real hand to help him up. Bilbo took it, thanking him as the orc pulled him to his feet.   
“I don’t know why it gave me such a fright. I was only here this morning.”  
“Ah, Wargle here tends to have that effect on people. Don’t worry, he’s a harmless puppy at heart.”  
The orc patted the Warg’s skull, a tender expression passing across his features. A moment passed in silence. 

“So are you the old night guard then?” Bilbo asked.   
“Yes!” the orc exclaimed, staking his hand off the warg skull. “Azog’s the name. Yeah, I’ve been doing this job for a few years now and I figure it’s time to move onto something new.”  
“Is that how you got those scars? On the job?”  
Azog laughed his deep laugh again. The pine needles started crackling.   
“No, no. Between you and me, this job’s quite dull. I’ve worked here for three years and we’ve never had any kind of break-in. I suppose people are more interested in making history out there rather than reading about it in here.”  
Bilbo frowned sympathetically.  
“Shame.”

“Well, I’d best show you the ropes, eh? Don’t worry, it’s nothing complicated. Just sit at the front desk and keep an eye on the security cameras until morning.”  
Azog walked over to a door hidden in a corner of the room with a sign reading ‘Staff Only’ on it. Bilbo trailed after him, stopping for a moment to study a large floor map on the wall beside it before following him through the door. He found himself in a poky little kitchen with a door straight ahead of him leading into a locker room. 

‘This is the tea room. Help yourself to tea and any food that appears in the fridge. Just make sure not to break or steal any mugs. Day shift is always complaining about theirs going missing. Through there are the lockers where you can stash anything you bring with you. There’s also a bathroom and a hallway leading to the loading dock. Now,” Azog opened a cabinet to his left and removed a flashlight. ‘This is for you. You’re lucky- that one’s brand new. Gandalf told me specifically you should have it. He even named it, weird guy.”

Bilbo ran a finger over the little label stuck below the button. ‘Sting’. There was another flicker, this timeless like fire, more like a cold flash of blue. He pushed the thought out of his mind and slid the flashlight into the spot dedicated to it on his belt. 

“And keys,” Azog said, handing them over. Something stirred in his dark eyes as they passed from his hand to Bilbo’s, but it only lasted a second. Could have been a trick of the light. 

“You’re all set. Good luck.”   
Azog made for the door, but stopped before leaving, his hand on the doorknob.   
“I almost forgot.”  
He pulled a tattered bundle of paper stapled together from his back pocket and tossed it lightly to Bilbo, who dropped it.   
“Instructions,” he said, pushing the door open. “Just procedure really. Nothing you should worry yourself about.” The door creaked and he was gone. Outside the sun was pushing its last rays across the peak of the lonely mountain and Bilbo Baggins was alone in the museum. 

The first thing he did as night guard was ignore the instructions. Azog had said that they were just procedure, nothing to worry about, and despite his uneasy feelings towards the orc he had worked here for years. He knew his way around. Instead, he stashed his book in a locker, retrieved his book and, pouring himself a cup of tea, settled in for a quiet night reading at the front desk. On the computer screen beside him, cameras flicked on without movement. All throughout the museum was a deafening silence. 

Under normal circumstances, Bilbo would have explored the place, but tonight something felt off. His eyes kept flicking from his book to the bent figure of an old man in a large grey hat across the room. Something about him made Bilbo’s hair stand on end. Once, when he’d visited as a child he’d gone right up to the figure and peered under the brim of his hat. He was met with the clearest blue eyes he had ever clapped his own ones upon. They had been so lifelike he could have sworn they'd moved. He’d avoided the old man ever since. He, just like so many other things in the museum, maybe Bilbo uneasy. When he was a kid he’d spent a lot of time here. It had been quiet, a welcome escape from the bustle of Dale. He would wander through the halls, poring over little plaques next to stuffed eagles and making faces at an odd wax-figure creature with bulging eyes and long, grabby fingers who lurked in the Creatures of Darkness gallery. 

However, it had been the tomb that had interested him the most. Despite it being the museum’s most impressive exhibit, the room in which the three great stone graves were housed had almost always been empty. The silence seemed to echo in that room, bouncing from the high intricately carved ceiling to the stony granite faces of the long-dead dwarves below. Often Bilbo would sit for hours in the quiet of that room, undisturbed and oddly at home. He would talk to them sometimes, he was embarrassed to admit. And sing. Then, one day he simply stopped visiting. He hadn’t set foot in the museum since. 

Sitting at the front desk, Bilbo whiled away an hour or so reading, serenely sipping his cup of tea that was growing gradually colder. The silence brought him back to his childhood, and he settled into the feeling, more comfortable than he had felt in years. So comfortable that he almost didn't register it when the voices started coming from the portrait gallery. 

The moment he did register them he started, sloshing the rest of his tea across the desk. He ducked down behind it, trying to make his breathing as quiet as possible so as to listen better. Even his heartbeat seemed deafening in what had only moments before been silence. 

Slowly and quietly he crawled on all fours around the desk, trying to catch a glimpse of who (or what) may be lurking in the portrait gallery. Directly in his line of sight was a floor to ceiling painting of the woods of Lothlorien, an elven dwelling of old. It was positioned directly between the two grand staircases leading to the upper levels, and suspended from the ceiling above it was a large stuffed eagle. The painting was incredibly lifelike, so detailed Bilbo could have sworn he could see the golden leaves swaying gently in the breeze. Then, he realised why- they were. 

Fear of any intruder dropped from him like a stone, and he stood, approaching the painting with a mixture of wonder and confusion. He drew near and stood before it, staring upwards. The trees were swaying all right, and as he stood there one golden leaf broke free of its branch and spiralled right out of the painting. He caught it deftly. 

It was real, there was no mistaking it. Looking upwards he scanned the ceiling for any kind of vent or opening a leaf may have blown in through. There was none. It was flat and featureless, and the trees in the painting kept swaying. The voices from the portrait gallery reached a crescendo and the matter of the intruders passed like a lightning bolt through the forefront of his mind. 

He shrunk against the wall, carefully avoiding leaning against the trees of Lorien. He didn’t quite believe it yet, but if leaves could come out in theory, he could fall in. Keeping his back to the wall he moved purposefully around the corner. His feet made no noise on the polished floor, a blessing of being a hobbit. The hallway he found himself in was empty bar the paintings that lined its walls and a few seats here and there. After his experience with the Lorien painting, he was on his guard. His eyes followed the eyes of the figures in the paintings across from him, sliding over the image of a dark-haired man with three children standing next to him and landing on a portrait is of a fair-haired silvan elf. His ears were adorned with autumn leaves and his eyes tracked Bilbo’s movements as he shrunk along the wall. Even on his guard, Bilbo almost screamed when the elf spoke. 

“You look familiar, halfling.” he droned, cocking his head slightly and leaning out of the frame itself. “Where have I seen you before?”  
Bilbo made a wheezy squeak in his throat.  
“Oh, please let’s skip the dramatics. You’re new I’m assuming?”  
Bilbo nodded slowly. He tried to swallow but his throat was mysteriously dry. The elf sighed.   
“What’s your name, halfling? I assume you’ve got one?”

“Baggins.” he choked out, his wits slowly returning to him. Clearly the frame was a hole in the wall leading into some kind of booth. The elf was an actor. This was all some elaborate prank someone was pulling. Probably Gandalf. 

In his frame the elf stilled, eyes narrowing and face thoughtful.  
“And your first name?” he asked slowly. 

“Bilbo,” he answered, considerably calmer. He flicked his eyes to the information plaque underneath the frame. It read ‘Thranduil, son of Oropher, King of the Woodland Realm’.  
“Are you from Mirkwood?” he asked. Thranduil, or whatever his real name was, scowled. 

“Bold, coming from the halfling who stole the keys to my dungeon from right under the nose of my guards and helped thirteen of my prisoners escape.” He sniffed haughtily, retreating back into his frame.   
“Are you an exhibit then? Didn’t know they recognized halfling heroes in dwarven cities. Not that your own people recognize your efforts either.”

“What in Middle-Earth are you talking about?” Bilbo said, snickering. Now that he saw through the prank the whole thing seemed rather amusing, really. A fun story to tell Frodo and Sam.

“Are you wax like so many of those dwarves? You’re incredibly lifelike.”

“Wha- no, I’m not an exhibit. I’m the night guard.”

Thranduil’s eyes widened for a moment and his lips parted in surprise. 

“Come here.” he commended, beckoning Bilbo forward. Bilbo approached cautiously, glaring up at the King from under his caramel curls. Thranduil bent down, reaching gracefully with a long-fingered hand out of the frame and pinched the side of Bilbo's face. Hard. 

“Ow!” he exclaimed, batting his hand away. “What did you do that for?”

“There’s a mark.” The king breathed, suddenly reproachful.  
“Yeah, thanks for that.” Bilbo retorted, rubbing his face and frowning.   
“Then the old tales are true.”  
It was Bilbo's turn to scowl.   
“Look, I don’t know who you are or why you think you know me, but I’ve actually got a job to keep and I’m pretty sure someone’s breaking in over there, so if you don’t mind I’m just going to go. If you can step out of that frame of yours feel free to tag along and continue being irritatingly cryptic.”

He continued down the hall, unlocking ‘Sting’ from his belt.  
“You genuinely don’t remember anything?” Thranduil shouted after him.  
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
“Erebor? The Lonely Mountain?”  
“Couple of miles away. This is Dale.”  
“Oakenshield?” he yelled as Bilbo neared the end of the hall and the voices grew louder. As his voice reached Bilbo’s ears the pine needles flared and he winced, putting a hand on his forehead. It was aching horribly, and he sank to the floor, pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to relieve the pain. His head hit the floor with a crack and in an instant that pain was replaced with a new pain. Thranduil, leaning out of his painting at the other end of the hall wore a cold, calculating expression mixed with a strange curiosity as if Bilbo were a lab specimen of some kind. 

Bilbo stood, picking Sting up from the floor across which it had rolled and, abandoning all caution, turned the corner. 

The sight that met him was not what he had been expecting, though the way this night was going he was not as surprised as he would normally have been. There were people in the museum all right- two burly dwarves to be exact. The strange thing about them was not that they were dwarves in a museum. In fact, dwarves visited the museum quite frequently. They were great lovers of their own people and culture, and unlike the elves, they hadn't (usually) lived through the events recorded here. The strange thing about them was that they appeared to be made of metal- one iron, one bronze. 

Bilbo had seen human statues before of course- there was usually at least one silver-painted person standing stock still in the Dale town square. He’d just never seen any that looked so...realistic. The lights set into the ceiling above them glinted silver in the shorter one’s long forked beard and the engraved tattoos on the taller one’s head gleamed rosy. As they moved their feet made tony clanking noises against the floor. 

The iron one had his back turned but the larger, much more intimidating bronze one did not, and as Bilbo watched in what should have been shock but was at this point more good-natured surprise, his hooded eyes flicked to Bilbo’s face. They too were bronze. ‘Contact lenses' was all Bilbo had time to think before the dwarf was pushing his companion aside and striding purposefully across the floor, his feet clanking loudly as he went. 

“What’re you doing Dwalin?” Bilbo heard the iron one ask as he retreated up the hall. Bronze or not the dwarf was much larger than he was and looked angry, and no matter how much he needed it Bilbo was not going to be maimed for the sake of a job. Oh, and he was holding a large bronze axe to match the rest of his attire. 

Bilbo was retreating speedily backwards up the hall, his internal monologue nothing hut the word ‘nope’ repeated over and over as the dwarves rounded the corner. Thranduil, hearing them coming, leaned lazily out of his frame. 

“Bilbo?” the bronze dwarf exclaimed, excitement creeping into his voice. Bilbo, halfway up the hall, stopped in his tracks. 

“By mahal you’re right.” breathed the iron one, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “It is him.”

“Bilbo!” the bronze one said again and started running up the hall towards him, the iron one in tow. Bilbo followed suit.

He sprinted the rest of the length of the hall, giving a very smug-looking Thranduil the finger as he passed. Speeding back into the foyer he frantically scanned the room, searching desperately for anywhere a hobbit might hide. His eyes landed on the desk and, knowing he barely had a moment before the dwarves were upon him, decided to take that chance. He slid behind it, crouching in the little space below the computer and pulling the wheelie chair in front of him, not a moment too soon. 

The dwarves thundered into the foyer, feet shaking the floor itself.   
“He’s gone.” came the gruff voice of the bronze one.   
“Aye, don’t you remember? He was always very good at disappearing. Quiet as a mouse those hobbits are, our Bilbo especially. You were right, Dwalin. It must be him.”

So the bronze one’s name was Dwalin.

“If it was him then why did he run?”  
The iron one laughed.  
“Who’s to say? None of us ever fully understood the little fellow did we? Now come on, we’d best find him. Maybe then he’ll tell us what all this fuss is about.”

They clattered off, their footsteps leading up one of the staircases. Bilbo waited until all he could hear was a distant clank, not unlike the noise always coming from inside Erebor, before he left his hiding spot. 

He had questions- a lot of them, but at the moment only one seemed like something he could answer easily. How had they gotten in?

He walked back to the portrait gallery, knees feeling unusually weak but still holding him upright. Thranduil was engrossed in conversation with the dark-haired man in the painting beside him as he passed, and he didn't pay the rather shell-shocked Bilbo any mind. Bilbo noted that the three children were missing from the dark-haired man’s painting. 

He reached the end of the hall without further fuss. He’d kept his eye resolutely ahead as he’d passed the paintings. Three moving paintings and two dwarves were enough for one night, he’d decided. Anything else and he may just have an aneurysm. 

At the end of the hall, there were two windows. He’d seen that on the floor map nailed to the wall in the foyer. He’d expected the dwarves had come in that way, but when he reached them, he not only found them both intact but their curtains pulled firmly shut. They were locked tight. 

Bilbo knelt, running his hand along the bottom of the window frame, just in case they'd removed the entire window and replaced it as they’d come in, and as he was doing so he noticed the large bronze half-cube sitting on the floor between the two. 

He crawled over to it, cautious this time. Who knew what it could be? As he drew near he noticed there were words engraved on the base. He crawled faster, but when he came face to face with them he was disappointed. They were written in dwarvish runes, a language they guarded against outsiders fiercely. 

He stood, brushing himself off as he did so, and came face to face with another plague, a plastic, museum issued one in westron. 

‘Dwalin, Son of Fundin, Statue in Bronze. Dwalin was head of the royal guard of Erebor before the invasion of the dragon Smaug during the third age. He was one of the thirteen dwarves that took part in the quest that led to them reclaiming Erebor and Smaug’s downfall.’

Something flickered again in Bilbo’s mind, like an itch he wasn’t able to scratch. He turned, looking down a third hall of paintings and noticed on the ground at the end of it another half-cube, this one in iron. He jogged to it.

‘Balin, Son of Fundin, Statue in Iron. Balin was a good friend and chief advisor of Thorin II Oakenshield both before the fall of Erebor and on the quest to reclaim it. Later in life, he was one of the dwarves that set out to reclaim the Mines of Moria and sadly died in the attempt. His tomb was found by the members of the Fellowship of the RIng at the end of the third age, during the War of the Ring.’

Bilbo winced again, rubbing his forehead. ‘Must be fumes or something’ he thought, wandering back to the foyer.

As he passed by Thranduil, the dark-haired man in the painting beside him called out:

“Mr Baggins? What are you doing here?”  
Bilbo sighed a long, weary sigh.   
“Who are you?”  
The man looked taken aback.  
“Bard. Of Laketown.”  
“Don’t know you.” He said, walking back to the front desk, exhausted.

**Author's Note:**

> Is this well-researched canon? No. Do I care? No. This is for fun if you don't like it don't read it. The first few chapters will probably be just introducing the characters/their roles in this au.


End file.
